Layers of complicated rules have mired America’s once simple voting system. Consider mail-in voting, early voting, a partisan federal government registering targeted voters, overseas voting for people who have never lived in the United States, noncitizen voting, and a host of other modern electoral changes. Like the tax code, voting has become intentionally intricate, and there is not a single change that will simplify the process back to the days of paper ballots counted by humans who get election night results.
The convoluted system is ripe for tampering, and addressing that is at the center of the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) 2024 ground game. RNC Chairman Michael Whatley says the party has focused its election integrity strategy in two areas.
“First, we want to make sure in every state that we have the right laws, rules and regulations in place to ensure that we have a fair, accurate, secure and transparent election,” Whatley told The Federalist. The RNC is enforcing election rules through the court. “The second thing is, we want to be in the room when the votes are being cast, and the votes are being counted.”
That is going to take a lot of engaged Republicans — average citizens — all around the country.
The RNC initially set a goal to recruit 100,000 volunteers across the country, but it has surpassed that, now counting 165,000 election watchers and workers. It’s important to know there is a difference. Election watchers are volunteers who watch the polling place on Election Day and speak up if things are not running smoothly. The RNC can train them. Election workers are hired and trained by local government. It is a temp job. They earn a paycheck and work on Election Day and the days running up to the election, processing mail-in ballots. They also have the authority to speak up if something is not right, and they generally are not kicked out if something is up.
More Volunteers Needed
Getting volunteers to sign up is one thing, but coordinating their training and scheduling them locally is complicated, Josh Findlay, director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s national Election Protection Project, told The Federalist.
The RNC’s plan to mobilize election workers relies on volunteers being proactive enough to attend training and get hired for the job. The RNC provides election officials with a list of trained volunteers to hire, so the mix of poll workers is close to 50/50, Republican and Democrat, as required by law in many states. To get on the list, volunteers must get training.
“Most counties have their own intake processes, and what we try to do is identify people that would like to work, and then make sure that we match them up with the appropriate officials to get them into the stream,” Whatley said. “Most states, not all, have rules that say that they have to have an equal number of Republicans and Democrats in those positions. We want to make sure that we have enough Republicans … in the cases where we have states or counties that are not hiring enough Republicans to be a parity, we’ve filed lawsuits, and we’ve gotten settlements and results on cases that have forced those municipalities to hire-up on that.”
Volunteers who sign up for election work through the RNC’s Protect the Vote website, receive regular emails and text messages from the RNC, reminding them how to get trained and credentialed to be hired as a poll worker, a process that is different in each state. State level RNC employees coordinate volunteers and either train them to be poll watchers and schedule them for poll watching, or help them fill out the paperwork and otherwise guide them through the process of getting local government training to be eligible to be hired as a poll worker.
The RNC must schedule poll watchers in shifts at many poll locations, to cover Election Day for the entire time polls are open, and it will want to assure Republican poll workers are scheduled, and show up to work.
In many states, such as Michigan, the RNC provides local governments with a list of trained Republican workers. The local government chooses its workers and gives the RNC a list of all poll workers it has hired. The state or local level RNC can then look at the list of names and see if there is a balanced number of Republicans and Democrats.
Findlay is concerned there is not enough time to convert enough volunteers from signed up, to trained and scheduled, to cover the thousands of shifts at polling places across America.
“We just had summer primary elections, and we need more people to step up and volunteer,” Findlay said. “Getting people to work a primary election is a significant predictor of their willingness to do it again for the general. It is also one of the major recruitment times. You have a lot of motivating factors during an election to get people to volunteer. With the volume of training happening, how actively are they moving people through this system that they have in place?”
The RNC had success in the Wisconsin primary, nominating 5,500 Republican poll workers for the state to hire, and filling 3,000 poll watching shifts. That put 8,500 sets of Republican eyes on the election at ground level and according to the RNC, they reported around 30 issues, including poll watchers not able to get into the room, and the RNC was able to quickly solve the problems.
But the level of success is different in each state, and some election watchdogs told The Federalist they are concerned the RNC may not have a strong enough plan to handle the logistics of managing all these people, get their unique-to-each-state training, and schedule them for shifts at hundreds of polling places.
Ultimately It’s On Voters to Engage
Some grassroots Republican groups want to partner with the RNC to help get poll workers and watchers in place. The RNC does speak with these groups, but it says it cannot partner with them due to restrictions connected to its nonprofit status.
Individuals can be educated about poll working and watching; texts and emails will be sent; but ultimately, it is up to the individual to show up.
“This is the first time the RNC has ever built a national election integrity program,” Whatley said. “This is our number one priority at the RNC. We’re very happy with the results that we’ve seen so far in terms of the volunteer excitement, enthusiasm, willingness to sign up, but we know that we have more to do, and we want everybody who cares about election integrity to go to protect the vote.com, and sign up, and get registered and be a part of our team.”
More volunteers are needed everywhere, Whatley said.
Findlay agreed, adding more are needed especially in counties that have been problematic in the past.
“We need more people to step up and volunteer,” Findlay said. “We need many more people in Clark County, Las Vegas, Fulton County, Georgia, and Philadelphia, because the stakes are higher.”
Correcting The System Through The Court
The RNC is also recruiting volunteers to get people to talk with their neighbors, get them registered to vote, and get their commitment to vote, either in person or by mail. And the RNC is actively involved in election litigation, recruiting thousands of attorneys across the country.
“We want to make sure we have a rapid response team of attorneys where we need them,” Whatley said. “If we can work with the governors, the legislators, the boards of elections, the secretaries of states, to make the changes that we need to, then that’s great. But if not, we will file lawsuits. We’ve filed over 100 lawsuits since I was general counsel, and now the chair.”
Whatley said there are numerous election problems, but the four legal issues that continually come up are: assuring states are enforcing the law that only American citizens can vote; making states clean up their voter rolls; pushing for voter identification; and placing basic safeguards on mail-in and absentee ballots where it is allowed.
“We’re fighting in the courts very aggressively to try and make sure that we have the right rules of the road in place before the voting starts.”
Among the RNC’s active cases are a California lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the state’s signature verification law; a case in Burlington, Vermont challenging a city law allowing non-citizens to vote in certain local elections; an Arizona case challenging the adequacy of the state’s voter list maintenance practices; and a Pennsylvania case regarding mail in ballots.
Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.
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